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The Web Week in Review – Special Economic Crisis Edition

Since it was pretty difficult to ignore the chaos in the financial markets this week, I decided to devote this installment of The Web Week in Review to the impact of the chaos on the technology sector.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer got in the act on Tuesday as he called on the United States Congress to “stabilize the situation.”

He observed that Microsoft will not be immune to the economic problems, stating:

“Financial issues are going to affect both business spending and consumer spending…”

Interestingly, he also mentioned that European banks face many of the same problems their counterparts in the United States do and expressed his hope that the European Central Bank would “be as intelligent as it needs to be around that.“

While Microsoft is diversified and is sitting on a pile of cash, Ballmer’s comments make it clear that even those in the strongest of positions are very concerned.

Specifically, RBC Capital Markets’ Michael Abramsky based in large part on a survey that showed fewer respondents planning to buy Macbooks in September than in August.

Of course, I’d argue that one should always exercise skepticism about the opinions of analysts and as some have pointed out, the survey Abramsky relied on isn’t exactly definitive.

And as the San Francisco Chronicle noted, most analysts still maintain a buy rating on Apple, although it’s worth pointing out that buying a buy rating as a stock goes down is not necessarily a good idea for those who like to make money.

While I certainly don’t believe that now is the time to be calling bottoms and loading up on shares of technology stocks that look “cheap,” it’s hard to call a woman’s purchase of a house in Saginaw, Michigan for $1.75 on eBay anything but a “bargain.”

Even though Saginaw is not an exotic destination (it’s been hit especially hard by the economy in recent years), at a cost of $1.75, $850 in back taxes and yard-clean up expenses, Joanne Smith’s new house looks like a decent deal.

After all, she’ll always have a place to call “home” even if it isn’t a luxurious estate.

Perhaps eBay can thrive in this economy by morphing into the go-to marketplace for foreclosed homes.

As ever, Grokdotcom has some useful e-commerce tips, this time on optimising site search results pages.

According to Daniel McGuigan, the search box can be the last chance to get a visitor to take action on your site, if they haven’t found what they want through navigation, landing pages or your homepage.

This is certainly true, but some visitors may also use the search box as their first port of call if they have a particular product in mind when visiting a site.

is a fast-growing etailer of contact lenses that was founded late last year.

The company aims to target consumers who buy their lenses online and go to their opticians for professional care - a trend that is apparently less prevalent in the UK than other countries, such as the US and Sweden.

We asked director Mitesh Patel how he is looking to change that, as well as where he sees the brand going.

According to a newly-published study published by Pew, nearly three-quarters of Facebook users polled said they didn’t know that Facebook generates and stores data about their interests and traits, and, when they came to learn this, over half indicated that they were uncomfortable with Facebook’s practice.

Mastercard, the third-largest credit card processor in the US, has announced a new policy that will make it more difficult for some businesses to automatically convert free trials into recurring subscriptions.